How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

I've just done a tutorial on using an ordinary computer keyboard with the N800 and N810:

http://tabletschool.blogspot.com/200...-ordinary.html

It's been extremely popular even though it's only been published for a few hours, so obviously there are a lot of people out there who want to do this kind of thing with their tablets.

I've tried the same method for attaching a USB flash drive which worked fine, and I'm going to try attaching an externally-powered HDD later on.

However, I'm getting a bit nervous working with memory storage devices, as Windows and Ubuntu require me to make them safe for removal before unplugging them. Is there any equivalent procedure when using flash drives or HDDs with the tablets?

(Before someone says search the forum, I couldn't find any mention of this particular thing in other threads on here.)

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Safe removal means unmounting the device.

run df -h to see where it is mounted and then as root, run umount <mount path>

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

:eek: :D

Okay, maybe I should have been more specific.

Does anyone know an EASY way to safely remove/unmount the devices? The kind of method I could publish on the Internet Tablet School site? A GUI-based method?

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Ah, I think I've found it!

If I click on the USB icon in the status bar at the top, there's an option which says "Disable USB Disk". When I select it, it tells me it's been disabled and that I can remove the cable.

The support for USB drives now seems so seamless (the automatic starting of File Manager, the message telling me to remove the cable when I disable it), it's as if Nokia had intended this to be an official feature but then kept quiet about it. Why on earth would they do that?

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Hehe, cool :). I don't have an adapter so I didn't know you could do that.

If you ever get a person asking;
http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...ad.php?t=17811

^ Will give you NTFS support on USB drives.

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

You should get an adapter, they only cost a few pounds/euros/dollars but they let you do lots of interesting things with the tablet. Attaching a keyboard alone has made it worth my while.

Thanks for the info, but I have real trouble understanding all the command line stuff, I'm not actually that good with getting "under the bonnet" of computers. I do try to point people to this board though whenever they ask technical questions.

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Wow, that does sound good. I can spare a couple of pounds :)

This is really easy actually, ukki did a great job. All you do is install the fuse package and the ntfs3g package after it using the application manager. and then just plug in the ntfs usb. No command line needed :)

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

My adaptor cost 4 euros which is about 3 pounds, it's so cheap and useful Nokia ought to bundle these with the tablets.

Even from a newbie's point of view it's incredibly easy to get it working: search for USB Control in the maemo.org downloads section, click on the install link, when it's installed open the app and press "host", then plug the keyboard (or whatever) in. Almost no technical knowledge required. :-)

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Hmm, this has got me itching to try out other USB devices. Is there any way to get a USB printer to work with the tablet? I couldn't find any mention of it in other threads...

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Hehe, http://www.internettablettalk.com/20...-linux-almost/

Not really conclusive. Best bet is to install penguinbait's KDE as that has cups (one of the printing standards afaiK)

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

It's nice but it's still too complicated for the average user.

Is it theoretically possible that a developer could add printer support to a maemo app? It would be nice for example to have Xournal with printing support.

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Yes, it's possible to add app support (even easy, if, as for Xournal, upstream already has it.); you still need a print spooler running, though.

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Well, I just looked up Print Spooler on the web ;) and it seems to be a separate programme used by other apps to send stuff to the printer. So someone would need to write one of those as well as write printing support into the actual apps?

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Like CUPS (the print spooler packaged with KDE), for example; but it would have to be packaged separately if you don't want to recommend KDE.

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Well, see, that's the problem, I don't want to make it complicated. One of the things about the tablets is you can do practically anything with them if you're willing to put the work into it, but most people don't want to.

It would be nice if there was some way to print from the normal tablet environment, so it would be exactly like it is now but there would be a "print" option in the menus of certain applications.

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Krisse, I luv ur website. Its so usefull even to a semi-experienced linux user like me. How many hits do u get every day?

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Be careful, though, with the power consumption. The usb port can deliver some power to the peripheral, but in the case of the tablet, this is limited to 100mA max. This should be enough for a keyboard, but it can be insufficient for a flash drive (mine requires 200mA max).

In order to know the power requirements of the peripherals befor plugging them to your tablet, you can connect them to a linux machine and issue the command "lsusb -v". This dumps a lot of information for each connected usb device. Most of this information is arcane for me, but you can easily spot the line about MaxPower.

Of course, you don't have to worry about power consumption if the peripheral is self-powered (such as a printer), or you are connecting it to the tablet through a self-powered hub.

What I'm still not sure about is: what could happen to your tablet if you exceed the allowed power consumption? I think that the usb device simply won't work, but... Can someone confirm that there is no damage for the tablet?

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Correct. The tablet will nicely reject devices that ask nicely for more power than possible, but if a device (like a USB fan/light/flowerpot/whatever) draws more power without asking, the N800 detects the overcurrent and shuts the port down. No damage.

Re: How do I safely remove a flash drive or HDD from the tablet?
 

Yes of course, and I make the point about power consumption in the tutorial if you scroll right to the bottom, in the section about connecting other USB peripherals.

The reason I made the tutorial just about the keyboard is precisely because I didn't want people to think this would work with all USB peripherals.

However, it does actually work with a Flash drive, at least mine worked fine every time I tried it, and that's my next tutorial.

This method should also work with USB HDDs if they have an external power supply.


I think 95% of people would not know how to do that. A much easier method is just to try it and see if it works?


If there's too little power, I can't see how there could be damage to anything. Electrical devices draw whatever power they need, and if there's too little they either don't work or they work intermittently.

I don't think there can be any damage to the device supplying the power.


Erm... well, it varies a lot but it's in four figures. The YouTube videos have been watched over 120,000 times so far.